Aciman announces deeply anticipated Call Me By Your Name sequel
Projected to be released on Oct. 29, 2019, the sequel will continue the story between Elio and Oliver.
In the world of Call Me By Your Name, the laziness of an Italian summer frames André Aciman’s captivating story of a similarly captivating summer romance. 17-year-old Elio Perlman goes into June believing this summer to be just like the years prior—playing his morning piano, sunbathing in the afternoons and spending the nights dancing in the town’s piazza.
All this changes once Oliver appears.
A doctoral student staying with the Perlman’s in Northern Italy, Oliver quickly turns Elio’s world upside down. The two embark in a heart-clenching, envy-evoking relationship, which ultimately ends in both characters’, and audience’s, heartbreak.
And now, Aciman has decided to fuel the fire even more, announcing the publication of the novel’s sequel twelve years after the original hit the shelves.
The development of Find Me is in partial thanks to the original’s fans—their enchantment with Aciman’s tale of the ill-fated lovers left them begging to revisit the Italian paradise he created.
However, the 2017 film by Luca Guadagnino shined light on the then ten-year-old novel like never before. Starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, the movie was met with such high acclaim, that Call Me hit record sales years after its release. Receiving nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Song (“Mystery of Love” by Sufjan Stevens) and winning Best Adapted Screenplay (James Ivory) at the 2018 Academy Awards, the film brought more fans into Elio and Oliver’s world, who then joined forces with the novel’s groupies and demanded a sequel.
Aciman, in response to his now army of fans, seemed happy to oblige them, and began writing Find Me in December of 2018.
“The world of Call Me by Your Name never left me,” Aciman said in a comment to Vulture. “Though I created the characters and was the author of their lives, what I never expected was that they’d end up teaching me things about intimacy and about love that I didn’t quite think I knew until I’d put them down on paper. The film made me realize that I wanted to be back with them and watch them over the years — which is why I wrote Find Me.”
Projected to be released on Oct. 29, 2019, the sequel will find an older Elio and Oliver still contemplating their feelings for one another, never truly forgetting the summer of 1987. A world-famous pianist, Elio’s memories seemingly smack him in the face when Professor Oliver finds him in Paris. In a new revelation, Aciman commented that Elio’s father, Samuel, would continue to act as the novels go-to wise-guy, bestowing advice upon the confused lovers.
Even before the sequel was announced, Guadagnino already had the second film in mind, ready to continue not just the romance, but the lives of the characters.
“The novel has 40 pages at the end that goes through the next 20 years of the lives of Elio and Oliver, so there is some sort of indication through the intention of [the author] that the story can continue,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
And continue it will.
Aciman obviously has large shoes to fill. But for a writer as clever and poetic as him, Find Me will undoubtedly live up to the legacy of Call Me. Until then, fans all over the world (including me) will be eagerly counting down the days until October, ready to re-enter Aciman’s world of easy, yet tumultuous love under an Italian sky, gearing up to once again call each other by our own name.
